“On your way out will you buy my Dad some chewing tobacco?”

Whenever my wife asks me that it send chills down my spine.

I don’t like doing it.

I don’t want to do it.

She doesn’t understand. She thinks it is because I have to go out of my way to do it.

This isn’t the case. I do a lot for her parents. For example, I’m scheduled to take them both to the doctor next Tuesday. This is certainly out of my way but I do it because they are part of my family. It is also something they need and cannot do for themselves.

It goes deeper than that with the chewing tobacco.

My father-in-law has been chewing for over 70 years. It is a normal part of his life. It can be expensive. He goes through a bag every two days; at seven dollars apiece this can be a very expensive habit especially for someone who receives very little in social security and has no savings.

Whenever I mention the expense to my mother-in-law her response is always the same. It is his only pleasure in life so she doesn’t want to deprive him of it. As a result she lives without things that she needs just so he can be happy.

But this isn’t all of it.

You see, my Dad was a smoker. He would go through two packs a day. After 38 years of smoking he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He had to go through radiation to try to cure it. The first thing they did was embed gold nuggets into his throat as a reference point for the radiation.

The program he went through caused him to lose all of his hair and I watched him go from a strong, robust man to a frail oldster. He was 54. He took to wearing wigs and his teeth started falling out. I remember one day when he said “Watch this” and just pulled a tooth out. It came root and all. He then pushed it back in.

During this time his doctor told him for the treatment to be effective he had to stop smoking. And he tried to. He would go for days without a cigarette but the addiction kept bringing him back. In fact he would ask me to buy him some. I didn’t want to do it but I went for him. And he would always say “I have lived a long life, I don’t want to forego my pleasures.”

Sound familiar?

Fast forward 5 years. He is still smoking but it appeared that his cancer had been cured. That is, until the doctor announced that it had come back and had spread through the rest of his body. They started him on chemotherapy and I watched him deteriorate rapidly.

During that time I got sick. I’m convinced it was walking pneumonia. I coughed constantly. But like a true guy I didn’t bother to see a doctor. I had been looking for a house and I didn’t want to take the time. I remember that I finally found one and I was in the process of signing papers. My Dad went with me to the realtor’s office because he was cosigning for me. I was still coughing constantly.

Inside of a month he wasn’t functioning anymore. He was on oxygen and had to be helped with everything he did. On the last day at home he couldn’t talk and wasn’t even aware of his surrounding. My brother and I took him to the hospital where he died several days later.

He died surrounded by his family except me; I was at work. I left at noon to be with him. I rode the elevator up to his floor only to find them at the door waiting to leave. It was done.

His death certificate says he died of pneumonia.

I have never gotten over the fact that I supplied him with his cigarettes at the end and that I may have given him the pneumonia that killed him. He was my Dad and I idolized him and this is how I repaid him.

Now my wife asks me to buy her Dad chewing tobacco. True, he is in his 80s but I don’t want to be the one to contribute to his death.

But we aren’t supposed to deprive him of his “one pleasure in life”.

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